- about 600 books, plus their additional
editions, close to 1,000 items (collections of papers by different authors,
abstracts and proceedings of meetings, booklets shorter than 50 pages,
and manuscripts are not considered),- on symmetry (they refer to this
term or its derivatives, including antisymmetry, asymmetry, dissymmetry,
directly in their titles),- in 25 languages (Bulgarian, Catalan,
Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hungarian,
Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rumanian,
Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovakian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian),- from all of the continents (from
Brazil to Mongolia, from Mexico to Australia, from Norway to Mozambique),- with the full bibliographic description
of each book (Bulgarian, Chinese, Greek, Japanese, Russian, and Ukrainian
names and titles are romanized), and- with translations of all book-titles
that have no English versions.

The books are classified according
to a system that was developed for this purpose. Since the "linear" classification
of interdisciplinary books is impossible, there are cross-references among
sections.

As it is emphasized in the heading,
all of the listed books are on symmetry (antisymmetry, asymmetry, dissymmetry,
and other derivatives): they refer to this fact directly in their titles.
Since the expression "symmetry" became an international word, its
adapted versions, with minor phonetical changes, are available in many
languages. In the case of Far Eastern books those are considered that use- the Chinese term duìchèn
(modern
Mandarin reading, Pinyin [sound assembly] system of romanization; which
is tui ch'eng according to the earlier Wade-Giles romanization),* its adopted Korean version tae-ch'ing
(McCune-Reischauer system of romanization),* its adopted Japanese version
taishou
(revised Hepburn system of romanization),or- the Japanese shinmetorii
(the adopted international word, which development has no Chinese or Korean
equivalent).The cited Chinese term, which is
written in two characters, is related to objects facing each other to form
a pair (bilateral symmetry), but its meaning can be extended to the case
of rotational symmetry. Still, it is more specific than the Western "symmetry".
Perhaps this observation also contributed to the fact that in modern Japanese
both terms are used: taishou (adopted from China and written in
Sino-Japanese kanji characters) and shinmetorii (adopted from Western
languages and written in the katakana phonetic syllabary).

Note the following important conventions:

(1) Books without reference to symmetry
(or its derivatives) in the title ® not
listed.

Unfortunately there are many books
of this category which deal with symmetry-related topics. Obviously, the
exclusion of these books has some disadvantages, but- it was necessary to limit the
scopes of this bibliography,- there are some good bibliographies
on polyhedra, proportions, rhythm, tilings and patterns, respectively,
which are available for further reference.

Graf, H. (1958) Bibliographie
zum Problem der Proportionen: Literatur über Proportionen, Mass und
Zahl in Architektur, Bildender Kunst und Natur, [Bibliography for
the Problem of Proportions: Literature on Proportions, Measure, and Number
in Architecture, Fine Art, and Nature, in German], Speyer [Germany]:
Pfälzische Landesbibliothek, 96 pp.* Also see the additions to this
bibliography in the following book:Wittkower, R. (1971) Architectural
Principles in the Age of Humanism, New York: Norton, 1971, "Appendix
3: Bibliographical notes on the theory of proportion", 162-166.

Grünbaum, B. and Shephard,
G. C. (1987) Tilings and Patterns, New York: Freeman, "References",
pp. 653-694.* Abridged ed., Tilings and
Patterns; An Introduction, New York: Freeman, 1989, "References", 401-442.
[The first seven chapters of the original book and the full list of references].

(2) In the case of translated books:- There are books where the original
titles refer to symmetry (or its derivatives), but the translated versions
are not ® in this case we still list the
bibliographic data of the translated versions.- There are books where the original
titles do not refer to symmetry (or its derivatives), but the translated
versions introduce this term ® in this case
we do not list the book and its translated versions.In short, our decision is based
on the author's original intention, not on the later view of the translators.

(3) Items shorter than 50 pages
are also excluded. We plan, however, to publish further bibliographies
on symmetry and related topics, covering not only university-textbooks,
scholarly monographs, and popular-scientific books, but also collections
of essays, proceedings, and other works.

International aspects

It is interesting to note that many
references in this bibliography are not yet available in major computer
catalogs, data banks, and electronic bookstores: they frequently miss older
items and books written in languages that are not widely spoken at their
centers. We think, however, that these works are also important. Often
they include tables and illustrations that are easy to understand without
reading the actual language. A beautiful example is Kumagai and Sawada
textbook Moyou to shinmetorii (Ornamental Patterns and Symmetry,
in Japanese) in Section 1.1.3. In addition
to this, the data of translated books - may help the international cooperation
among interested scholars and instructors,- may provide useful information
to lecturers and students who visit particular countries and would like
to refer to locally available works,- may orient publishers and translators.

We observed in various cases that
translators of books did not revise the list of references, just adopted
it. This method led to such comic cases where, for example, an English
book on symmetry (translated from German) refers not to the original version
of papers and books in English, but to their later German translations.
Should the reader learn German to follow the references? I also believe
that even publishers did not realize some basic data on translated books
that are available in our bibliography. The lack of information led to
duplicating or even triplicating the same work. I have no different explanation
of the surprizing fact that Hermann Weyl's book Symmetry (Princeton,
1952) has- three different Spanish translations:
(1) Buenos Aires, 1958; (2) Barcelona, 1974; (3) Madrid, 1990.- three different Chinese translations
(with see slightly different titles!): (1) Beijing [Peking], 1986; (2)
Taibei [Taipei, Taiwan], (3) Shanghai.These are not reprint editions
of the same translation, but different interpretations of the book.

If a book has more than one translation,
we list these in a chronological order (according to the first editions
in the corresponding languages).

In those cases where a translated
titles significantly differ from the original ones (or a new subtitles
are added), these "modified" titles are also translated into English. For
example, Pagels' book Perfect Symmetry: The Search
for the Beginning of Time, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985; 2nd
ed., New York: Bantam, 1991became in Japanese Toki no hajimari e no tabi:
Taishousei no butsuri [Journey to the Beginning of Time: The Physics
of Symmetry], while, as a further twist, the
second edition was translated as Hoshi kara ginga e: Heesheru
no niwa [From the Stars to the Milky Way: Herschel's Garden].There is no similar "problem" with
the Italian and Portuguese translations of the same book. They follow more
or less the original title and therefore these titles are not translated
into English.

Concerning translated books, we
give the possible "new" (transliterated) names of authors in those cases
where these are important to locate the book in the corresponding language
territory, e.g., - Sheikov, a Bulgarian author (in
English transliterated form)became- Scheikov in the German translation
of his book,- Sejkov in the Hungarian version.Luckily there is no similar problem
in Japan: most library catalogs list the Japanese translations of foreign
books under the original names of authors.

The translation of terms is often
a very difficult task. In some cases we added alternative expressions <interrupting
the translated titles> or brief notes [in brackets at the end]. The related
problems led to two case studies and related hypertext essays:- objectology or object-design
as possible English equivalents of the Japanese monogaku,- futaishou as a possible
Japanese equivalant of dissymmetry (lack of some elements of symmetry).

Some conventions used in this
bibliography

To keep the bibliography shorter,
we adopted the following conventions: - If a book is published in a series
whose title is important to find some extra information about it, we give
the series title after the actual title of the book (note that the title
of the book is italicized, while the series title is not). - For place of publication, only
the first one is given, followed by the name of the state or country if
any difficulty may occur in locating the corresponding city [and maybe
some additional information in brackets, e.g., the new names of some places
in the former U.S.S.R.].- The names of publishers are given
in short form, e.g., we have Springer instead of Springer Verlag. We use,
however, the full names of publishers where the sort forms may lead to
ambiguities, e.g., we should make clear that a book is published either
by the Academy of Science of the U.S.S.R. (Akademiya Nauk SSSR) or by the
Publishing House of the same institution (Izdatel'stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR). - In the case of parallel editions,
we refer to both publishers.- Reprint, paperback, and new editions
are also listed; these are marked by asterisk (*).- Translations are listed in new
paragraphs; these are marked by dash (-).- In some cases there are brief
notes after the books [in brackets].- We use the conventional transliteration
of Cyrillic words [sometimes giving alternative versions of names in brackets]. - In the case of the transliteration
of Japanese names and titles, we use the system preferred by most wordprocessors
and some computerized data banks where, e.g., instead ô and
û, we have ou and uu (without diacritical symbols!),
respectively. We do not introduce, however, this style in case of "Tokyo",
because this city is known in this form, while the linguistically correct
"Toukyou" would be very strange for most readers.

We use some standard abbreviations:
ed. (edition or editor), eds. (editions), ibid. (ibidem, in the same place),
pp. (pages), trans. (translation).

A request

Of course this bibliography is not
complete. We kindly ask our readers to report any missing item. We will
regularly update this bibliography.